Israel Plans to Cooperate With Inquiry Into Violence

Israel said Sunday that it plans to cooperate with a U.S.-led international inquiry into nine weeks of violence in which nearly 300 people, mostly Palestinians, have been killed.

Israel had been reluctant to go along with the probe, but a senior aide to Prime Minister Ehud Barak said the government expected agreement on the inquiry’s mandate before a team of investigators arrives in mid-December.

The United States hopes that the investigation, led by former Sen. George J. Mitchell, who mediated peace efforts in Northern Ireland, can ease Israeli-Palestinian tensions.

“Israel will cooperate with it fully and entirely transparently,” aide Gilead Sher told Israel Radio. “We expect that all the terms of reference--the mandate--will be concluded before it goes into action.”

At least 294 people have been killed in the recent bloodshed.

In the West Bank village of Hussan, Israeli troops Sunday wounded at least 25 Palestinians, seven of them critically, Palestinian witnesses and hospital officials said.

They said soldiers and Jewish settlers stormed the village and fired at its mosque, where worshipers were forced to take cover for more than an hour.

Asked about the account, an army spokeswoman said: “The Palestinians started hurling petrol bombs at soldiers, and [the troops] responded with gunfire toward those throwing them and used tear gas.”

The spokeswoman said that Palestinian gunmen had fired at an Israeli woman driving past the village near Bethlehem and that she had been slightly wounded.

Heavy gunfire echoed along a familiar firing line between the Palestinian village of Beit Jala, outside Bethlehem, and Gilo, a Jewish settlement on occupied land that Israel regards as a Jerusalem neighborhood.

Palestinian witnesses said that El Aza refugee camp near Bethlehem came under Israeli fire and that two people, including a 13-year-old girl, were wounded.

Palestinian witnesses also said an Israeli helicopter fired two missiles at El Eida refugee camp near Bethlehem early today, hurting two people.

The army had no comment. Israel Radio said the missiles were fired toward Palestinian gunmen.

Earlier, two Israeli soldiers were stabbed, one of them in the neck, near the West Bank city of Ramallah. Doctors at a hospital in Jerusalem said the condition of the soldier stabbed in the neck was critical. The stabbings prompted a shooting exchange between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian gunmen, and three Palestinians were wounded, according to Israel’s Army Radio.